The popular belief is that to become good at something, you have to invest 10,000 hours. That’s a full time job for 5 years. Fortunately, it is not true. If you want to become the very best of the best, and excel in a highly competitive field, you need to invest 10,000 hours of focused practice. But, according to Josh Kaufman’s TEDx talk, you only need 20 hours to learn pretty much anything you can think of, from business skills to sports to playing the ukelele.

For most of the skills you need, in business and in life, being proficient is all that is necessary. You don’t have to be the best in the world, just good enough to do what you need to do.[Read more…]

Do you like to learn new things? Most entrepreneurs have a lot of curiosity about…well, everything. And they love to learn.

Learning can take the form of reading books, researching on the web, attending seminars and workshops, completing a home study course, listening to audio books and teleseminars, watching webinars and videos, signing up for courses at colleges and other institutions, etc. There is a massive amount of information available that can help you to become more successful or enrich your life in other ways.

The danger in learning is that you can spend all of your time learning and not take the time to apply what you have learned. I know I can be guilty of this. I get excited about something new, dig in to learn all I can about it, then I want to move on to the next thing.

Learning is important, but it is more important to do something with the knowledge you acquire. Here is how you can put your knowledge to work:[Read more…]